Saturday, March 3, 2012

WHO WILL CARE FOR THE CHILDREN?

The call came at 10:30 that
night. She had just gotten back to her room from a long, late dinner with two former
fellow graduate students whom she hadn't seen for almost a decade. She had
turned off her cell phone during the conference sessions and had forgotten to
turn it back on during dinner. When the hotel phone rang, she answered in two
rings.It was her husband, David.

"Lynn, I've been trying to
get hold of you. Jamie's in the hospital."

She answered in the controlled
tone she used automatically during a crisis. "What's the matter?"

"I'm not sure.
Appendicitis. The pediatrician saw him and told me to take him straight to the
emergency room. I'm here right now. In the hospital. They're going to operate."
David's voice sounded tense and disconnected.

"When are
they going to operate?"

"As soon as they can. As soon as the surgeon gets here. It may have burst. The appendix."

She gasped to herself, but said
quietly, "I'll come home as soon as I can. I may not be able to get out
tonight, but there should be a flight early in the morning."

"Your mother's with him
right now."

"Who's the surgeon?"

"I don't know."

"I'll call you and
Marjorie as soon as I make plane reservations."

"All right. I'll pick you
up at the airport.

As soon as she hung up the
phone, she called the airline, made a reservation on the earliest plane she
could take out of Dallas the next morning and canceled her Thursday flight. She
had to transfer in Atlanta, and wouldn't arrive home until 1:20 the next
afternoon. It was the best she could do. It was after 11:00 at night when she
called Marjorie, a neighbor and the closest friend she had, to give her the
flight schedule.

The phone rang five
times before Marjorie finally answered. "Oh Lynn! Where are you?" she
asked in a slightly hoarse voice.

"Still in Texas. Did David
tell you about Jamie?"

"Yeah, he called from the
hospital. I saw the poor kid before he went to the doctor. He was doubled over
in pain. Screaming and crying like mad. David called me and asked me to come
over and take a look at him. Guess he figured a mother would know what to
do."

"Wasn't my mother
there?"

"Yeah, your mom was there.
She looked kind of upset. I believe she'd just given him an enema. Thought he
was constipated. I told David he ought to get the kid to a doctor. Quick."

"Well, I'm coming back. I
won't get in until tomorrow afternoon, though. David will call you in the
morning. My plane gets in at 1:20 in the afternoon. Flight 1322, Delta."

"O.K."

"Where's Melinda?"

"Right here. She's
sleeping on the couch."

"Good. Can she stay there
overnight?"

"Sure, Lynn. Of
course."

"You've got a key to our
house. Send her over in the morning to get clean clothes for school. She can
take lunch money out of the vase on my dresser. She knows where it is."

"She'll be all right, Lynn."

"Thanks, Marjorie."

"Don't worry about it.
Have a safe trip back."

Still in the grip of her
compulsive calmness, she called the front desk of the hotel and left a message
for a colleague saying she couldn't have lunch with him the next day. Having
taken care of the necessary practical details, she sat in the chair next to the
bed, put her head in her hands, and wept.

Jamie had been complaining of a
stomach ache for nearly a week before she left. She and David thought it was a
bid for attention. He'd been out running and playing with other children in the
neighborhood just the evening before she took the plane to Dallas. He always had some complaint before
she went to meetings or conferences. Usually his stomach; he'd always had a
sensitive stomach. Even when he was a baby, she and David often took him on
long drives in the car to quiet him when he (and they) suffered from his
attacks of colic.

'Why did Mother have to give
him an enema?' Lynn
asked herself. Her mother was one for keeping children's bowels moving,
especially if they had a stomach ache. Every childhood illness could be blamed
on constipation. The enema was exactly the wrong thing to do.'My poor baby,' she chanted to herself. He
wasn't exactly a baby, anymore. He was six years old, in first grade and
learning to read. How far behind would this put him in his school work?

Mother, of course, would blame
her. Mother had never understood why she went back to work in the first place.
When Jamie was two and Melinda had started kindergarten, Lynn took a job as a research associate at
the University. She tried to justify her decision to her mother.

"We can really use the
money."

"Well, Honey, you've
managed so far. You could scrimp a little. Tighten your belt. That's what I'd
do. Why do you have to go back to work?"

"It's not just work,
Mother. It's a career.I've had years of
training. I don't want it to go to waste! I can't stay out much longer or I'll
forget everything I was trained for. I'll never be able to go back."

"But who
will care for the children?"

That, of course, was always the
question. Lynn
had made the necessary arrangements. Nursery. Baby sitters. A part time housekeeper for a while. She managed to juggle everything so the
children were always supervised, always in somebody's "care."

Now that they were both in
school full time, it was a bit easier. They took the bus to school in the
morning and another bus dropped them off after school at the day care center.
Either she or David picked them up in the evening on the way home from work.

Why did David have to wait for
Marjorie to suggest taking Jamie to the doctor?Why couldn't he just look at the child and know he was sick? At least,
palpate his abdomen. But then, David had never bothered to learn which side of
the body the appendix or gall bladder or spleen was on. He was an engineer;
machines were his specialty. The body was a deliberately sustained mystery to
him. He, too, would blame her, though he wouldn't say it in so many words. Why
wasn't she there when he needed her? Why should he have to call a neighbor?

And she, too,
would blame herself. Why wasn't she there when her child needed her? Could she
have forestalled this crisis by paying more careful attention to his pain? Why
had she left the children in the charge of two people who knew nothing about
medicine or even biology? But then, who else should she leave them with?What if he died from her neglect? From her preoccupation with preparing her talk
and packing for the conference?

She changed
into her nightgown, called the front desk and asked for a 4:00 a.m. wake-up
call and for a cab at 4:30, and then got into bed. She set the travel alarm she
always brought with her, just in case.

As she lay in bed, she enumerated
her losses. Of the $700.00 plane fare, she had paid $300.00 out of pocket. That
was irretrievable. She had presented her talk that morning, the first day of
the conference. So at least that wasn't a loss. But she had been looking
forward to three more days of worry-free learning. That was gone.She would not have the opportunity to talk
with Ryder and compare techniques and results with him. He had confirmed some
of her anomalous data using a different method, and now people were beginning
to take her work seriously. All the top people in the field were here. She
would miss hearing their papers, miss talking with them, miss developing a
collegial rapport with them. She'd miss learning new techniques and new
approaches to her research area. There wouldn't be another gathering like this one
for a long time. She'd have to do it all the hard way—in the library, on her
own.

On the morning
plane ride to Atlanta, high above the clouds, she felt utterly cut off,
isolated from everything—home and family, profession and colleagues. She could
not know how her boy was doing, even whether or not he was still alive.
Somewhere in her subconscious, she believed he was, but she also knew that he
was in danger.

By the second leg of her flight
back, her sense of suspension in a web of dichotomies had settled into her being.
Home and profession. Husband and children. Reason and an almost mystical appeal
to the power of will. Determination and resignation. It seemed as though
ambiguity lay at the very center of her soul; in it was her only security and
peace. She felt a numbness that no tears penetrated.

David met her at the airport.

"How's Jamie?" were
the first words out of her mouth.

"They operated last night.
Apparently his appendix was ruptured. They're worried about peritonitis."

"I was afraid of
that."

"What is it, exactly?"

"It's inflammation in the abdomen. It's caused by bacteria
that get into the peritoneal cavity and spread and multiply around the
intestines. If it doesn't kill you, you may get internal adhesions, scars where internal organs stick together and can cause trouble for life."

"Good heavens!"

They got into the car and drove
silently to the hospital. She followed her husband into Jamie's room. Her
mother, in the far corner of the room, looked up from her book when they walked
in. Jamie lay flat on the bed in a white hospital gown, his left arm strapped
to a board, an intravenous tube bound to the arm with tape. A plastic bottle
filled with clear fluid was suspended high above his head and drained slowly
into the tube. He turned his head toward them and gave his mother a weak smile
as she entered the room. His face was feverish and his eyes listless and
half-lidded. She went over to him and kissed his forehead, then laid her cheek
against his. His face seemed to be burning.

"Hi, Mom," he said
gallantly.

"How did you get yourself
into this predicament?" she asked.

"It wasn't my fault,"
he answered, as if taking her question seriously.

"I know, Dear." She
turned to her husband. "What did the doctor say?"

"He was in earlier this
morning. Didn't say much. He said he'd be back in the afternoon. I guess we
just have to hang in there and wait."

"They're
giving him antibiotics in his veins," said her mother. "He can't eat anything
but clear liquids."

He looked so
small and frail, lying there. What would several days of clear liquids do to that
already slight body? He had never been as solid as his sister. Now he would be
even thinner. 'Thin people are supposed to live longer.' she thought, as if
telling herself a cruel joke.

Her mother turned to David.
"Since Lynn's here, I can take the car and drop you off at work, then go
to the house and pick up Melinda. We can come back about 5:30 this
afternoon."

"O.K., Mom,"
David said.

"Thanks, Mother."

Lynn was left with the listless boy. They
were both helpless, at the mercy of forces neither had much control of. The
battle of organisms and antibiotics. The battle of Death against the
Will-to-Life. She could not will his life for him; she could only be there and
try to help him will it for himself.

When the nurse came in to
change his dressing, Lynn left the room and walked down the hall to a small
sitting room for parents. A petite, dark-haired woman, apparently younger than Lynn, sat smoking a
cigarette. She looked up. Lynn smiled and nodded toward her; the woman nodded
back. Lynn sat in a nearby chair.

The woman put
out her cigarette and asked, "Do you have a child here?"

"Yes, a
little boy."

"Me too. Seven years
old."

"Mine is six."

"Really? What's he here
for?"

"Appendicitis. They took
out his appendix last night."

"I wish mine had something
that simple."

"Oh?"

"Robert has
leukemia." She lit another cigarette. "He was in remission for six
months. It's back again. They're giving him chemotherapy and
transfusions."

"How long has he been in
the hospital?"

"Over a week now. They're
trying to get his blood count right. Something like that."

"Yeah, they try to kill
off the cancerous cells and replace them with normal cells."

"How do you know about
that?"

"I do research in the
area."

"Really!" She paused. "What's your child here
for?"

"Appendicitis."

"Oh, yes. You told me.
Where's his room?"

"Down at the other end of
the hall. The last room."

"That's next to my
Robert's room. I guess I heard them bring your boy in last night."

"Have you been staying in
the hospital?"

"Yeah. I've stayed
overnight in his room all week. Don't get much sleep, though."

"Do you have a job? Are
you taking time off from work to stay with your boy?"

"Oh, no, I can't work.
I've got a little girl three years old at home besides Robert to take care
of."

"Oh."

"Do you work?"

"Yes."

"Isn't it hard? Working
and taking care of a family?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm glad I don't
have to," the woman said slowly, taking a long drag on her cigarette. "My
husband earns enough to keep us going. His insurance should cover most of the
hospital bills. But we'll still have plenty to pay, I'm sure. We'll worry about
that when the time comes."

Lynn didn't know what to say. She wanted to
get back to Jamie. As she stood up to go, she said, "I hope your boy gets
better and can leave the hospital soon." She knew that, even if the child did
improve and left the hospital, there was a real possibility that he'd be back,
and that he might eventually die of that insidious, malignant disease. She
hoped her horrible knowledge didn't show on her face.

"Same here." The
woman had a smile on her lips, but her eyes were sad.

When Lynn got back to the room, Jamie was crying.

'What's the matter, Baby?"

"It hurts, Momma. It
hurts."

"I know, Darling."

That evening, Jamie's fever was
still high. The doctor came in briefly and said the child seemed better but
wasn't out of the woods yet. David and Melinda came during visiting hours, then
left. Her mother stopped by briefly and went from the hospital back to Camden
that evening. "Dad needs me, Honey. I'll come back in a day or two."

After they
all had left, Lynn made up the small cot beside her son's bed. She lay down on
her back and listened to his fitful breathing and the occasional short cries of
pain emitted in his sleep. Silent tears ran down the side of her face. Through
the wall that separated them, she could hear the woman in the next room sobbing
loudly.

'She's in
even greater despair than I am,' Lynn thought. 'Staying home with her child
hasn't protected him from serious illness or the specter of Death. Why
this eternal female despair? Men get angry and lash out at those things that
threaten or frustrate them. Or they run away. We women are bound to all that
causes us pain. We remain to weep for the wounded and helpless. Is it
necessary, somehow, for the begetting and sustaining of life that women weep?'

She remembered another time in
another hospital, three days after Melinda was born. Lynn wanted to nurse her baby, but the milk
had not come in. That lovely, placid child had, with each succeeding day,
become increasingly fretful. Every time Lynn went to the nursery, the baby was
crying. When the nurse brought Melinda into her room, Lynn would give the baby the
breast—first one, then another—but there didn't seem to be anything there. Finally, that night,
she sat in the rocking chair in the corner of her room, the baby in her arms, rocking
and rocking, letting her suckle. When the nurse came to take the baby, Lynn
said, "Please leave us alone."

She sat there in the darkened
room, holding her child at breast, weeping, rocking, weeping, for an hour,
perhaps longer. She lost all track of time. Finally, exhausted and hopeless,
she took the baby back to the nursery. The next morning, her breasts were
engorged and painful—so full that, at the thought of her child, they began spouting
little fountains of milk that ran down her sides and abdomen like tears.

[This was written during the early eighties, at a time when I was stressed about work and child-care responsibilities. Although it has been submitted several times, it has not been published]

About Me

Grew up in Michigan, lived in Syracuse, NY, Philadelphia, PA., and Charleston, SC. B.A., M.S., Ph.D. in biology, chemistry, anatomy. Taught, did research, and published in biomedical sciences. Professor at MUSC in Charleston, SC. Mother of three and grandmother of six.

Has lived in six countries on three continents, and has traveled in twenty five other countries around the globe, visiting every continent except Antarctica. Active in UU church. Phi Beta Kappa, Who's Who in America, the World. Has written two books--one on comparative religion and one on adventures in Korea.